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Presented by Facebook: | | | | | |  | | By Sam Stein and Alex Thompson | | | Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina RICHARD TRUMKA, the president of the AFL-CIO, died unexpectedly Thursday. And while he was known best as a towering figure in the labor community, he also represented a bulldog brand of politics that, while rare, is making a bit of a comeback. Trumka’s upbringing was in the coal mines of southwestern Pennsylvania—a biography that gave him legitimacy and, in turn, compelled him to demand more of his brethren. The most memorable instance of this came in 2008 during a speech to the national convention of United Steelworkers. In it, Trumka recounted a conversation with a woman from his hometown who was not going to vote for BARACK OBAMA. "Her eyes dropped down and she said to me, 'Well, he's a Black man,’” Trumka recounted. "And I said to her, 'Look around this town….Our kids are moving away because there's no future here. And here's a man, Barack Obama, who's going to fight for people like us, and you want to tell me that you won't vote for him because of the color of his skin? Are you out of your ever-loving mind, lady?’" At that point, the union haul stood in applause. But Trumka wasn’t done. He went on to admonish those in attendance for turning a blind eye to racism in the workplace. “We can’t tap dance” around it, he implored. | Rare are the cases when officials in positions of political leadership turn to their supporters and say, in essence, “Don’t be dumb.” But that was Trumka, who had a rare ability to make his blunt leadership style work. Almost exactly 13 years later, in perhaps his last public act, he announced his support for mandating that those in his federation get vaccinated against Covid-19. His declaration put him at odds with some of the AFL-CIO’s largest members. But Trumka didn’t walk anything back. He felt comfortable saying exactly what he thought and sticking to it. During the Covid vaccination campaign, it has been an article of faith that getting the country inoculated requires going heavy on carrots and light on sticks: incentives, access, education and communication. And for good reason. Studies show that shaming people about not getting vaccinated will almost assuredly result in them staying unvaccinated. But in recent weeks, some top health and elected officials are bucking that advice and adopting something approximating a Don’t Be Dumb doctrine as they tackle the rise of the Delta variant. Gov. KAY IVEY (R-Ala.) told her own unvaccinated constituents—many of them conservatve DONALD TRUMP supporters—that they were the problem. Gov. PHIL MURPHY (D-N.J.) called anti-Covid vaccine protesters the “ultimate knuckleheads.” And Gov. ASA HUTCHINSON (R-Ark.) chastised himself for signing a law outlawing mask mandates. The Biden administration hasn’t gotten quite so pugilistic. But officials do concede they’ve become less delicate. Dr. ANTHONY FAUCI, the president’s point man on Covid, has plowed forward with dire warnings to those not inoculated that they risk allowing even more dangerous variants to spread. Secretary of Education MIGUEL CARDONA warned governors opposing mask mandates that they’d be responsible for school’s closing. The mantra, across the board, has been that the country is experiencing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” which is not just a warning about the perils of not getting the shot but a not-so-subtle castigation of that choice. “I think you started to see a harder line because the behavior of the unvaccinated is threatening the return to normality,” an administration official told West Wing Playbook. “It is ‘yes and,’ not ‘either or.’ The encouragement was strong and it worked. Now we have this stubborn 30 percent [of people unvaccinated]. What’s going to change that dynamic? A harder line.” Though there is still a long way to go to quash the virus, the vaccination rate for the newly vaccinated has risen steadily in the past two weeks, with the seven-day average up 44 percent as of today. Experts suspect that a number of factors are at play: the specter of rising hospitalizations and death; demands from private entities and government bodies that workforces get vaccinated or risk their jobs; cash incentives and amplified PR campaigns. But maybe more aggressively calling out bad behavior — like Trumka used to do with impish delight — is not an altogether bad idea after all, some health experts now say. ZEKE EMANUEL, the bioethicist, and a vice provost of the University of Pennsylvania, compared the vaccination campaign to the campaign to stop smoking. Both relied on financial incentives, clear public health communication, and business mandates. But the anti-smoking effort relied heavily on peer pressure, too. “We know shaming has a role in social norming,” Emanuel said. “The social norm here is you get vaccinated to protect yourself and people around you….And maybe that’s the bigger point. It has to be a holistic approach but shaming can play a role.” In other words, the message to those Americans refusing to get vaccinated might require some version of that Trumka-esque outburst: “Are you out of your ever-loving mind, lady?’" Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you CRISTÓBAL ALEX? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. | | A message from Facebook: The internet has changed a lot since 1996 - internet regulations should too
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– Reforming Section 230 | | | | | | With the Partnership for Public Service Tomorrow, August 7th, marks Biden’s 200th day in office. What president died on his 200th day in office? (Answer is at the bottom.) | | | | 
Cartoon by Joel Pett | Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader | Every Friday, we’ll feature a cartoon of the week — this one is courtesy of JOEL PETT of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Our very own MATT WUERKER also publishes a selection of cartoons from all over the country. View the cartoon carousel here. | | | WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ — Biden is a big DAVID BROOKS fan. He did an interview with the New York Times columnist in May. In his 2017 memoir, Biden cited a 2015 Brooks column encouraging him to jump into the 2016 campaign. He has brought up Brooks’ columns and books on the campaign trail. So it’s no surprise that the White House salivated over Brooks’ column today that had the simple headline “The Biden Approach is Working.” Brooks’ last line delighted the Biden team further. “American politics is in God-awful shape, but we’re seeing a reasonably successful attempt to build it back better,” he wrote. It was so effusive that Chief of Staff RON KLAIN tweeted the link while writing: “I'm. Just. Going. To. Leave. This. Here.” WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: A pair of stories on the harsh conditions for migrant children in border facilities. The New York Times described children housed in “long, wide trailers, with little space for recreation and not much to do during the hot summer days” with some children saying “they can wait more than a month before meeting with someone who can help connect them with a family member or other sponsor inside the United States.” The Times also notes that some children “report episodes of food poisoning and say they have to wash their clothes in a bathroom sink.” And Fox News published video and photos from inside a facility in Donna, Texas. DO IT FOR THE GRAM: Vice President KAMALA HARRIS sat down with BERNICE KING on Instagram Live this evening to chat about voting rights. CIRCLING BACK: White House press secretary JEN PSAKI made good on the administration’s promise to bring back VANESSA TYLER of the Black Information Network after turn in the “Skype Seat” last week was marred by technical issues. But Psaki didn’t quite address Tyler’s question about whether the president supported a carve-out exception to the Senate filibuster for things like voting rights legislation. When Psaki filibustered the filibuster question by restating the president’s desire to sign a voting rights package, as well as the policing reform bill named after George Floyd, Tyler pressed her further. Psaki responded that Biden “has not changed his position” on the filibuster and remains hopeful that a bill will make its way to his desk. FROM NICK NIEDZWIADEK | | | JOBS, JOBS, JOBS — The president was quite pleased with this morning’s jobs report, which showed 943,000 new jobs created in July and the unemployment rate dropping to 5.4 percent. So pleased, in fact, that he went in front of the press to crow ever so slightly. “The Biden plan is working,” he said, “the Biden plan produces results, and the Biden plan is moving the country forward.” Biden’s biased, of course. But here’s another indication that the report was good news for the White House: The Republican National Committee didn’t blast out a statement to their press list on it. The committee had done so after more disappointing reports in April and May in addition to sending out emails in which they called the June numbers “lackluster.” Asked about the lack of a formal press release, the RNC's EMMA VAUGHN told us: "The hope for many Americans is coming from the Republican Governors who are leading the economic recovery by ending Biden and Democrats’ disastrous policy of paying people more not to work, which is why red states are continuously outpacing blue states in recovering jobs.” The committee did send a tweet about it THE OTHER EMANUEL: RAHM EMANUEL is still waiting for his phone call to be ambassador to Japan and his brother Zeke (quoted above) may be in line to join the administration before him. Zeke Emanuel is being floated to be FDA commissioner, ADAM CANCRYN and SARAH OWERMOHLE report . The Biden administration has struggled to explain why they have yet to nominate a head for the agency amid the pandemic and when millions are waiting for full FDA authorization of Covid-19 vaccines. STUDENT LOAN REPRIEVE: The Biden admin will extend the freeze on federal student loans until Jan. 31, 2022 which had been set to expire at the end of September, MICHAEL STRATFORD reports. An official describes this to Michael as a “final” extension. | | | |   | | | | | | Tucker Carlson: The Only Threat to Hungarian Democracy Is Joe Biden (NYMag’s Jonathan Chait) Wall Street Journal Editorial Board praises Biden on Hong Kong (WSJ’s Editorial Board) How Pakistan Could Become Biden’s Worst Enemy ( Foreign Policy’s Michael Hirsh) Elle interviewed principal deputy press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE (Elle’s Madison Feller) | | | Biden spoke about the July jobs report from the East Room and left for Wilmington, Del. for the weekend following those remarks. Before kicking off the weekend, he and Vice President Harris received their weekly economic briefing. | | | She attended the economic briefing virtually with the president. | | | Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN was a fan of popstar OLIVIA RODRIGO’s music even before she went to the White House. In a Rolling Stone interview in June , he confessed he had been listening to her single “Driver’s License” — a breakup track about a teenager getting her drivers license and reminiscing about moments with her ex. The single is “really good,” he said. Blinken has his own musical chops. He’s in the band “Ablinken”—get it???—with a few singles you can sample on Spotify, though he’s been self-deprecating about his skills in the past . “It’s a little bit odd, or surprising, because there are some folks, as she’s demonstrated, who have a natural gift. It’s just there,” he said. “Not the case with me. I have to work at it. And even then. But at least I know enough to appreciate it.” Good 4 u. | | | JAMES GARFIELD died on September 19, 1881 — 200 days after the March 4 inauguration. We want your tips, but we also want your feedback. What should we be covering in this newsletter that we’re not? What are we getting wrong? Please let us know. Edited by Sam Stein | | A message from Facebook: Why Facebook supports updated internet regulations
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